Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1901 — EVOLUTION OF THE CENSUS. [ARTICLE]

EVOLUTION OF THE CENSUS.

Taken in the Middle Ages TTor the Purpose of Taxation. The term “census” had its origin in Rome, and was applied to one group of the censor’s many and varied functions, says a writer in the Paris Messenger. The Roman census was chiefly concerned with fiscal matters, and we may suppose that the enumerators were not too effectively welcomed by the inhabitants. In the middle ages the census meant neither more nor less than a tax, and the final, formal, material, and efficient cause of every numbering of a people was the desire of its castle-clad government for money or the actual sinews of war. Under the absolute monarchies which appeared in Europe after the decline and fall of the feudal system, the tendency to centralization for administrative purposes prepared the way for statistical inquiries, into the numbers of the inhabitants of particular districts. The necessity of such stock taking was first clearly pointed out by Adam Smith, but it was not till long after his death that the first census of Great Britain—it did not extend to Irland—was carried out. A census bIU, which passed the Lower House in 1753, was thrown out by the Lords at being “profane and subversive of liberty.” Accordingly, up to 1801, the number of Inhabitants of the British Islands was/as much a matter of guesswork population of China is to-day, and, as invariably happens in such cases, the result of the enumeration was a great disappointment to all the statistical prophets. The progress of the census methods since the first year of the last century may be illustrated by the development of the occupational returns. In 1801 there were but three divisions —those employed in agriculture, those engaged in trade or manufacture and those engaged in neither. In the next two censuses no material change in this respect was made, but in 1831 the overseers of parishes were required to give details respecting the occupations of males over 20. In the census of 1841, an enumeration most facilitated by the uniform system of registration of births, marriages, and deaths which came into force in 1837, the enumerators were instructed to enter each person’s description of his own occupation. An interesting feature of the census of 1851 was an attempt to supply the ecclesiastical and educational statistics of the country, but no effort was made to elaborate the occupation returns. The census of 1861 was also, to a certain degree, experimental. In 1871 the first imperial census was taken—and the census paper of that date —an interesting article, by the way, could be written on the series of elev; n —is obviously the great grandfather of the present form.